Ain’t It Cool News says Christian Bale will play John Connor in Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. CHUD.com says he will play one of the Terminators, instead. Who to believe? Who to believe? If Bale is playing John Connor, then my first reaction to this news is to wonder if Bale, who is currently making only his second Batman movie, really needs another action-hero franchise right now. Then again, producer James Middleton did say a couple months ago that the... Read more

MTV Movies Blog has posted the second part of their interview with Chris Weitz, writer-director of The Golden Compass. It includes these interesting bits: QUESTION #5 (from HisDarkMaterials.org):The potential of the upcoming film has become somewhat controversial, mainly due to the misguided notion that the books are deliberately and vehemently anti-religious and that the aim of the series was to “kill” God. Most notable, The Catholic League recently published a rather overzealous article that has been widely spread across a... Read more

My review of August Rush is now up at CT Movies. Read more

Time for another batch of quick news blurbs. 1. The production of Angels & Demons may have been put on hold for now, but reportedly Naomi Watts has signed on to play Tom Hanks’s Italian love interest. — New York Post 2. While promoting American Gangster in England, Russell Crowe let spill a few more details regarding Nottingham, the revisionist Robin Hood movie he plans to make next year with director Ridley Scott: Will the sheriff of Nottingham be more... Read more

My friend Christian Hamaker, knowing that I am a fan of both Disney cartoons and Bible movies, pointed me to this item that went up today at one of the Reuters blogs: Donald Duck has been expelled from Noah’s Ark. To be more precise, a Donald Duck film clip has been removed from a replica of Noah’s Ark in the Netherlands. That came after a local church protested that the film being shown to children visiting the ark strayed too... Read more

And now for a few smaller items. 1. Ben Cross, who played the Jewish athlete Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire (1981), has been tapped to play Spock’s father Sarek in Star Trek XI. Mark Lenard, who played the character in three TV episodes and three movies, was 42 when the original series began, and less than 7 years older than Leonard Nimoy, who played his son; Cross turns 60 in a few weeks, and is thus 30 years older... Read more

My goodness. The Golden Compass doesn’t come out for another two and a half weeks, and already the Daily Telegraph has a review up. A few excerpts: But an early screening of The Golden Compass in Los Angeles reveals that the investors who put up the £90 million cost of the film can rest easy – though it lacks the impact or charm of The Chronicles of Narnia, the special effects are extraordinary and the film is sure to be... Read more

Back in 1998, a child actor by the name of Joseph Cross appeared in three films that, to put it mildly, did nothing to make me a fan of his. He might very well have been a good kid to hang out with, but his performances in Desperate Measures, Jack Frost and M. Night Shyamalan’s Wide Awake were all designed to pull just a little too hard on the audience’s heartstrings, and I found them all off-putting to one degree... Read more

Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest. No Country for Old Men — CDN $564,074 — N.AM $4,907,572 — 11.5%American Gangster — CDN $9,150,000 — N.AM $100,650,615 — 9.1%Bee Movie — CDN $8,220,000 — N.AM $93,570,695 — 8.8%Lions for Lambs — CDN $957,366 — N.AM $11,584,339 — 8.3%Saw IV — CDN $4,790,000 — N.AM $61,766,718 — 7.8%Beowulf... Read more

One recent news item deserves a post all to itself, if only because it gives me an excuse to post an image from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Last Thursday, the Globe and Mail posted an interview with David Levy, author of Love + Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. The newspaper introduces it by stating: “In the book, he predicts that by 2050, men and women will be enjoying physical and emotional bonds with extremely lifelike, apparently conscious... Read more